


of travel i’ve had my share, man (i’ve been everywhere)

by notafraidofanythingreasonable



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, Fate, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 09:08:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5369693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notafraidofanythingreasonable/pseuds/notafraidofanythingreasonable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Boswell leaves Seattle and Grey Sloan Memorial and returns to life. Or rather, she tries to. </p><p>Five years later and maybe there will be a chance to get things cleared up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of travel i’ve had my share, man (i’ve been everywhere)

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

She watches as Dr. Torres and Arizona move down the corridor, voices raised and escalating. With a deep inhale she shuts her eyes and when she reopens them, she’s nearly mastered impassiveness, and is ready to face the judgement of the couple’s co-workers. For a moment she is tempted to duck out and retreat back into the on-call room. But nothing is thrown her way. 

It’s a rather anti-climactic end to a climatic affair. 

Instead, minutes march on with a slow steady thrum and she makes a move to join Dr. Karev and check back in with the babies. 

In a few hours’ time, as she opens the door to the on-call room, she catches sight of the bed they’d shared. She grabs her luggage and is out of there so fast, because, with this stretch of time between them she knows it’s enough for Arizona to make a decision. Without a constant reminder, Arizona won’t choose her. They are alike in many ways, brilliant with an infectious optimism in their work, but damaged enough that scars linger and when agitated it’s easier to run than to let the pain gnaw. 

If Arizona gets enough distance from her; if they don’t see each other again, she won’t cave and she won’t ask for her. Arizona will take that distance and make it a mile or a lifetime and never step into the arms of temptation again.

As the darkness outside subsides and the bottomless seeming puddles still, she finds herself quickly ferried way under the glowing rouge cover of dawn. 

She’s not at all surprised when she ends up in the airport. And hates herself for it. It’s so simple: taxi, airport, plane. It is so familiar a feeling of runaway. But this time, an ache remains in her chest, and the bags under her eyes say it’s anything but easy. 

Still, Arizona said she had made a mistake and hadn’t tried to find her before she left. It is easy enough to read between the lines. She wasn’t wanted here. Arizona hadn’t meant to really talk to her later, had she? 

I’m not going to leave things like this. I like you, a lot. Her own words haunt her with the ghostly caress of a “what if?” So, Lauren will wait. Jackson has her contacts. If Arizona wants her; if her and Dr. Torres can’t salvage what they had, she’ll call. And so, Lauren will wait.

Lauren leaves Seattle and heads back down to LA. She’s already got a case scheduled in Prague, and another in Munich. She’ll wander on the peripheral looking in on others for a while. 

*

The dust settles and Lauren goes back to her life. And it isn’t strange to see a string of blondes with tousled hair leaving her apartment or hotel rooms in the early mornings. When she sleeps with them, when she’s going down on someone, from the angle between her spread thighs she can almost imagine something more.

“Fuck, Lauren, I need you so much closer,” she begs and it’s the intimacy of the pleading that makes Lauren comply, settling between the woman’s legs and busying her tongue with a collarbone, an earlobe. She blows heated breath into her neck and murmurs dirty things, satisfied with how her companion buries her nails on her back at each new sentence. God, she feels so wanted. 

She feels the body beneath her building up, the woman’s orgasm dancing on that dangerous edge, and she allows herself a few more moments of leaving her on the cusp before removing her fingers abruptly and moving up the bed until her knees are on both sides of the blonde’s face.

Flustered, the woman doesn’t seem to understand what is happening for a few seconds and when she does, she groans in desperation and her first instinct is to take the matter into her own hands. Her fingers and palm descend her abdomen.

“No,” Lauren tells her, spreading her legs a bit further and taking, grabbing onto the headboard. “You were pretty content with giving me this the last time.” She rolls her hips seductively and shivers when her soaked folds make contact with the woman’s lips. 

She feels a semblance of control creep back, and it will have to do before it evaporates with the morning dew.

*

Over the coming months, sometimes she’ll pick up the phone to call Jackson Avery but she never does. She will never be sorry for wanting and desiring; although, she wishes she hadn’t abandoned Arizona now. 

Maybe both of them had been waiting for the other and now the waiting has become grief over abruptly severed ties and a misunderstanding: both of them presuming it was just lust and meaningless sex at the end of the day, a throwaway night where promises to talk later were platitudes.

She wishes she had had more bravado that day. But the rejection and backlash had stung. How do you say sorry for completely dismantling someone's life in less than 48 hours? What is there to even be sorry for if you’re trying to save a woman from the shadow of her former self? How is it her fault if someone feels lonely enough to stray?

Dr. Avery has contacted her office twice more for other consults but she's been able to decline with a valid excuse each time: “Would love to but I’m on assignment already in Montreux;” “It’s not a good time, there’s been a death in the family...” 

*

Two years down the line, when she's tucking a brain back into a baby’s skull, she remembers a distant conversation: in a prep-room in Seattle, two people scrubbing in, eyes shining in mischief above surgical masks, and making flirtatious promises to remember each other by. 

She wraps up the operation, replacing the frontal flap and gently suturing it closed. Lauren exits the OR, throws her soiled items into a nearby basket and leans her head against the wall. She wonders if Arizona has done this a hundred times since, and has she thought of her? Has she thought about her each time? Occasionally? Once? The first operation after their night together and then pushed Lauren from her mind altogether? 

Lauren knew Arizona was the one. She would have changed her ways for her. She knew Arizona would have made her clean up her act so she could be something to someone. She had been ready to be that someone, and now she’s stuck in a world she built for herself. A rock star doctor, yes, but it gets lonesome on the road. 

She gives a humourless chuckle, shakes her head to clear it, and pulls at the door. She exits in haste to see about the post-op schedule.

*

Half a decade later, and she swears she’s never, in her lifetime, and never will again, make some honest to god earnest and cliché comment about someone's eyes. Cause there’s only one set worth commenting about. And she’s been done for ever since. Every other pair of eyes she’s gazed into, over a surgical procedure, at a coffee shop, in the low lighting of a classy restaurant, in the throes of passion, hasn’t had the same intense mischievousness and vulnerability. 

God, crystal blue; she'd said hazel as a diversion that night in the elevator, as it descended and ensconced them in a confessional of makeshift proportions. She’d been flirting but she hadn’t wanted to seem desperate for god’s sake.

She hadn’t wanted to seem like she’d been thinking about those eyes and their exact reactions to a well-placed look, a well-timed brush of a shoulder, or a secretive joke.

Lauren already knew all about the impending dimples, the blush, the flush of desire. She hadn’t wanted to seem like she’d already started to memorize the finer details of Dr. Arizona Robbins’ face.

*

Lauren grew up in Richmond, Texas. 

In her own words she’d say she had been, "A straight, abstinent, WASP-y, head cheerleader. And quite possibly a bit of a bitch. All of those former labels once killing her a little each day, inside.”

The backdrop of her early years: Oil money. Ranches. A mother who'd drink a little too much and a father who'd be out of town too often. 

It isn’t often that Lauren will talk about her pre-med days. She seldom talks about being so trapped and angry and so far back in another lifetime. Yet, a few times, when she’s felt particularly vulnerable, she’s let her guard down and allowed the stories to slip past her lips.

“My mother wasn’t very happy with a lot of the choices I made, even when I made them to impress her. I think, because, try as I might have, I never got it right. But, eventually, when I knew if something was worth anything, something I knew was important, I wouldn’t let her stop me. In the end, she got used to those things. She couldn’t tell me what to do. But she did learn how to plead, nag, and wear me down, so much that I haven’t seen her in years.”

“My father, on the other hand, if he came home for longer than a few days, resorted to yelling and bribery.” 

Her first crush was in 9th grade. The girl had been older and in 12th grade, and after that, it had been about watching girl after girl after girl get married and get tied down with soccer practices for the kids, debutante balls, house parties all the while ensuring everyone’s enjoying the hors-d'oeuvres.

Lauren had never wanted to be owned by anyone, couldn’t understand the friend who had just wanted to find a husband and get married. 

Didn’t she have any real life goals? Lauren had inquired fiercely. Didn't she want to do something or make something of herself, and not waste the entirety of her existence looking after an ungrateful family? 

Neither of them had really understood each other. Lauren knew from her parents and her sister that tying yourself to someone was always a mistake, one that usually wrecked a good chunk of your life. But it was also incidental. When you decided to take someone you added him to your agenda as you kept prodding along towards your real goals.  
If his goal was to drink like a fish and take copious amounts of pills, if his goals were in disagreement with hers, then life in the south told her to take it and smile and never let it waver. 

Why would anyone search for this as their sole goal in life?

It had always been a complete mystery to Lauren.

*

From one rebellion to another, she never wanted any of what they threw at her. She wanted short term responsibilities. She wanted to leave, never hide who she was again, and never have to ask for their blessings again. 

By the week before graduation, she had had everything packed and loaded into a red ‘94 Wrangler. In the glove compartment, she had a full scholarship to UCLA with her name on it. Soon she’d be hundreds of miles away from home, and finally breathing easier.

She claimed she wanted adventure and short-term commitments and freedom, so it was ironic when she committed to four years of medical school after completing her pre-med, and there followed another eight years specializing in plastic surgery and maxillary before settling into craniofacial surgery. She found herself transplanted from UCLA to John Hopkins out in Baltimore, Maryland, hundreds of miles from home. And still breathing easier. 

After she’d run away to Los Angeles and two years into her internship, one night on the phone with her brother, Tony, he comes to understand what happened, probably better than her. 

“An adolescent crush, Lauren? Christ’s sake, really? I didn’t think you had any of those.”

“What…? He pretends that her voice didn’t break there. A crush?” Lauren growls in to the speaker, “It was sex. I didn’t pathetically trail after her for weeks on end afterwards. I think I did it to piss off mom and dad. Everything I did in those days was for that reason.” 

She plays with a loose thread on her varsity sweatshirt, picks up a bottle and considers refilling her wine glass, but she sets it down instead. “It was right before I left.”

He hums in agreement, “A catalyst to embolden you to break with your family and make it on your own?” And she grows a little more irritable.

At night sometimes, her heart might beat a little faster but she had been brave enough to try. That’s what counted, right?

Nothing matters if there isn’t anyone to lose. 

*

She's the first in her family to go into medicine. She's all silent bravado and sharp edges. She doesn't want to be tied down cause those are obstacles and those are the things that will get in the way. She never backs away from a challenge. 

By the time she turns 35, she's been transformed by loss. She’s been transformed by the OR and she’s become human. It’s everything: more than she can ever say her parents made her to be. She's open and no longer painfully defensive, angry and shy. She doesn’t fight for scraps of recognition like they are fleeting. 

She learns to understand the phrase getting more by using honey. So, while in LA and Baltimore, it's easy to get the Texan out of state, but it’s still hard to get the Texan out of the girl; her southern drawl turns a decent amount of heads and has definitely helped her charm her way through many a situation. It sure helped her charm her way into plenty of beds. 

*

It’s been five years since. The courtyard is littered with delicate, yellow leaves, and closing her eyes; Lauren breathes in the scent of autumn in Chicago. She holds that breath until she can’t, and exhales. The warmed vapour rushes from her as a gentle wind whispers between the trees and buildings and tumbles everything out of its place.

As another several seconds pass, Lauren reminds herself to let them, to enjoy moments as they are.

But, as fate will have it, it isn’t strange when she has a sudden desire to head back into the conference centre, and place an order for a dark roast coffee at the nearby cart. As she steps back to let others place orders, something in her senses tingle. It was a familiar feeling that hadn’t been dulled by the lapse of time. 

Years ago, she could practically sense the blonde from a mile in any direction – through the walls of an elevator, from one end of a cafeteria to the other, and even down the unlit halls of a pediatric ward.

Arizona is right in front of her again, this time in Chicago, in the midst of conference chaos. And, like some red thread tethering them together, her hand makes a move to grab Lauren's order. 

In an instant, Lauren extends her arm and her hand gently traps Arizona's. 

“I’m Lauren,” somehow makes it past her lips.

This is fate, right? 

If luck strikes twice and gives someone like her a second chance, she will sure as hell take it. 

*

This time it’s Arizona standing there, staring at Lauren’s outstretched hand. The hand is familiar; the veins are a little more pronounced, but the scar along the knuckles is the same. There is that awkward pause too as they hold each other’s gaze and the past comes rushing back to them as if it were yesterday: lightning streaking across the sky outside, heavy breaths against an ear, against a thigh. 

They both feel out the situation. Then Arizona laughs, shakes her head at the absurdity of the moment, and pulls Lauren into an embrace. 

Yes, Lauren thinks to herself. Yes. I’ve been told to lose a bit of control too. 

*

In the lamp lit glow of Lauren’s room, there are hundreds of things still left unsaid, things for them to talk through, but Lauren simply knows that the proximity that they are sharing now is their answer. They are both here. No deadlines. No barriers. No false pretenses. Just pure unbridled desire. And a question in each other’s eyes.  
And the questions aren’t enough to keep Arizona from reaching for her, holding her hand out to touch Lauren as if she were an apparition. And they kiss — a bit of tongue, and slow between every press. 

They have sex because it is still the one way they know how to communicate what’s always been left unsaid. Lauren decides to count it as a win however small and insignificant.

*

Arizona stands a little straighter, but looks back at the city lights and the towering presence of the John Hancock Centre, away from Lauren. "I tried to put on a brave face for you when I told you it was a mistake; it haunted me. But, one of us had to say it.” 

Arizona looks down into her glass, “I was having so much fun running around working with you and still inside I felt it was so unfair and wrong to be enjoying myself when so much has happened to me, between me and Callie. I felt so guilty and afraid.”

Arizona lets out a sad laugh as she looks at Lauren, “I was supposed to be sad and mourning, but I was happy and all I wanted to do was to kiss this irritatingly confident and gorgeous doctor.” Arizona looks out the 27th story window again and wraps her arms around her waist as Lauren leans forward in shock. "I felt like I was tarnishing everything I had ever worked for. I’m supposed to be a good man in a storm. And there I was stirring up the gale and holding a welcome sign for inclement weather. For a while there, I would return to our on-call room, alone, at night, and feel so conflicted.”

“But Jackson, you could have asked him. You could have called me, talked to me,” Lauren said, softly.

“I was really a mess back then, Lauren. I hid it well, but," Arizona shook her head and tilted her glass back. The ice hit her teeth. She gave Lauren a wry smile as she lowered the glass. “I'm not much better now, but I have people to talk to and they tell me when I'm retreating and wallowing."

Arizona continues, "I thought I was doing you a favour."

"By crushing me? Crushing our chances? I wanted to stand by you. I didn’t care if every last one of your colleagues saw me as some homewrecker. I wanted to help you through,” Lauren nearly sobs out.

"When you kissed me, touched me, all I could see was yet another loss. It felt like a gift and death all wrapped into one. I had to push you away as far as I could. I thought that everyone I truly cared for would be taken from me and then I was even more scared because you would be next. I didn’t trust you yet,” Arizona looked into her glass. "After you kissed me, I knew I could no longer be your friend. I would always be tempted knowing you, knowing how you taste, and then you would be gone."

"So, instead, you left me with the wonderful memory of a broken woman, too torn and exhausted to make a choice, someone who thought our night together putting our carefully collected control aside was worthless." Lauren presses, “It was an exercise in finding ourselves, Arizona. We had to see our future and our past reflected in one another. It was awful and hateful and deceitful. But, fuck, we found us. We found how to live and feel again.”

“I have forgiven you,” Arizona lets out, “I had no right to put the blame on you, I know. It was a two way street and you, you were just being honest with yourself when I couldn’t. I couldn’t fault you for that anymore after a few months. It was terrible timing and then I felt so ashamed and that you hadn’t been serious about talking. Jackson saw you into a cab and away you went. I envied how you escaped the aftermath.” She placed her glass down by the minibar and poured herself some more. 

Taking a long look at Arizona’s profile, Lauren makes a decision, “I think we are ready to move forward instead of constantly beating out heads against the wall.” Lauren continues, “Are you ready to come up for air with me?”

*

She pushes Arizona hard against the wall and pulls one of her legs up around to cradle her waist. There are too many clothes between them and Lauren needs to feel more of Arizona or she’ll go mad.

Lauren absolutely loves the way Arizona’s hands won’t leave her head. They’ve grabbed her face. They’ve grabbed her neck. And now they’re holding firmly to Lauren’s hair in an odd mixture of aggression and tenderness. She isn’t sure if she should groan or whimper.

Arizona stops the kissing to strip off Lauren’s belt. Lauren can relate.

She is a lot less disciplined, or a lot more impatient, and soon her hands are traveling all over Arizona’s body. She lets go of the leg to open the buttons of the blonde’s shirt and for a moment she thinks she might cry because Arizona’s breasts encased in a lace bra are one of the most outstanding visions she’s ever had the privilege of seeing. She quickly unhooks and peels off the bra to cup both breasts.

There’s a possessiveness to what they’re doing and Lauren is not surprised when Arizona pretty much magics off her pants and starts pushing her towards the bed, their lips still at battle. It makes Lauren grin into the kiss and when the back of her knees finally hit the bed, something in her snaps and she disentangles herself from Arizona, leaving space between their bodies.

“No, no. Hang on,” she pleads. Arizona stares at her, eyes wild and hair a mess. “Let me look at you.”

There’s genuine surprise in Arizona’s eyes and she is still the most gorgeous woman Lauren has ever taken to bed.

“God, you’re so fucking beautiful.” They both fall on the bed, a tangle of limbs and wet kisses.

Arizona doesn’t seem to mind. She sits up and expertly unbuttons Lauren’s pants, pulling them down in deliberate motions. Lauren is sure she won’t survive tonight when those lips find a resting place against her stomach and, a few seconds later, she feels teeth tugging at her underwear.

Arizona switches their positions, making Lauren fall on her back with an embarrassing squeal. Arizona flashes her a prize-winning smile before covering her mouth with her lips again. Being kissed in such a way makes it seem like kissing would be enough but soon Arizona presses her thigh against Lauren’s soaked core and all she wants is more.

When she slides her fingers inside Arizona’s panties, she finds her really damn hot, and wet, and it takes all of her self-restraint not to just take, and have, and pound away at her and make her beg for more. Another Lauren, at another time, with another woman would have, but now she wants to take it slow and savor Arizona and give her a night she won’t forget.

With her middle finger, she circles Arizona’s clit and Arizona tears her mouth away from Lauren’s to clamp down on her shoulder in a silent plea for more. Lauren doesn’t obey. Instead, she gently penetrates her with two fingers and then removes her hand completely.

Arizona’s head snaps up, clear annoyance in her eyes. Lauren smirks before slowly licking her fingers and raising an eyebrow, her eyes never straying from Arizona’s. She resists the urge to laugh at the way Arizona looks like she can’t believe what she’s actually seeing. That’s right, being on top has always been her thing. 

Lauren kisses Arizona all the way down to her breasts, at which point she takes a nipple in her mouth while pinching the other hard. Her other hand returns to where Arizona wants it the most and their combined breathing becomes heavier, louder. Lauren grows increasingly aroused with Arizona’s nails firmly gripping her ass, pulling her closer, and she thinks she might come with the way the blonde is biting, mewling, and breathing into her ear.

She slips two fingers inside Arizona’s waiting entrance and uses her thumb to keep caressing the clit.

When she topples over the edge, it’s a beautiful sight, one that makes Lauren feel pure joy and fills her chest with pride. Arizona’s body arches, her cunt craving for Lauren’s touch and chasing the pressure, and she grabs the sheets so hard she might rip them apart. Seconds race by, Arizona’s lips part until she finally comes with a moan, her back landing on the bed with a dull thud. She’s panting, her arms are jelly like and Lauren can’t help the smirk after eliciting such a response.

*

When her eyelids flutter open, clear blue meets hazel and Lauren shudders at the intensity she perceives there.

Arizona surprises her by enveloping her right nipple with her mouth, alternating between sucking and nibbling.

“Fuck, Arizona…”

Lauren enjoys it, watching. She really does and looking down at perfect, supple lips busy with her breasts, at the light hair concealing half of Arizona’s face, at long lashes caressing her skin, it’s so much more than Lauren had hoped their night could be. She gasps, feeling Arizona’s palm covering her center, and rolls her hips to push for more contact.

“Harder,” Lauren growls, one of her hands in the blonde’s hair, the other scratching at her back. She grunts, a finger sliding inside her, but it’s not enough. “More.” Arizona bites her nipple, clearly unimpressed with the bossing and adds two fingers, knuckle-deep.

Lauren thanks her by pulling her hair and kissing her insatiably, riding Arizona’s hand at a manic speed.

Fuck. 

*

Lauren loses track of time. She sucks on Arizona’s clit way longer than either of them would have expected, but she doesn’t seem capable of stopping, not when Arizona comes like this: hands clutching sheets, her hair, her ass.

They both lose track of time and lose count and lose themselves in each other until Arizona can’t possibly handle it anymore. 

Lauren climbs up, leaving a trail of warm kisses all over Arizona’s abdomen, and finally relaxes on top of her, forehead resting where neck meets shoulder.

Arizona tilts Lauren’s chin with her forefinger and forces her to look up. Lauren does and for an instant she’s honestly frightened of the emotion she sees in Arizona’s eyes. The blonde seems to sense this and just leans in to tenderly place a gentle peck on her lips. Lauren can pretty much melt now.

“Thank you.”

The blonde smiles the brightest smile and shuts her eyes, still high off their love making.

*

“I knew you’d be at the conference,” the earnestness and honesty in Arizona’s voice draws her out of her slumber. “We won’t mess up this thing we have; not again. I won’t let it happen,” Arizona continues softly, as she nips at her ear and her breathe tickles her cheek.

A vulnerable, yet hopeful look crosses Lauren’s face then, and her voice is small when she asks, “You won’t?”

Arizona nods, tracing her thumb against Lauren’s bottom lip. “I won’t.” She smiles, tangles her fingers in her hair, and brings their lips together.

It may be idealistic, and it shouldn’t be something anyone should just guarantee, but it feels right to make her a promise, not just for Lauren’s sake, but for her own. It’s been five years. And five is too long a wait and just long enough. So when the next five, or ten, or maybe even twenty roll around, she wants them both to be looking onwards towards the horizon, rather than behind.

~fin


End file.
